Chapter 11

One by One

TRIGGER WARNINGS: this chapter contains scenes of fantasy-typical violence; there is not gratuitous detail although there is still some; the violence in this chapter was ordered for manipulative reasons; Jabez’s headspace in this chapter is not in a good place

Myles has an air to him that puts me at ease. He’s all soft curves, friendly brown eyes, and a warm smile with curly hair that falls over his forehead and ears in tight coils.

Wyatt leads Brook, Astra, Ky, and I across the Sea in the opposite direction of the approaching Guard and Soldiers. We follow Wyatt, and they soon draw to a halt near the very edge of the Sea at a tent a little smaller than most, one for only a single person.

“Myles,” Wyatt calls, slapping the back of their hand on the flap of the tent.

“Oh, hello,” Myles says as he steps out. He’s dressed in the usual attire of those in the Sea: An off-white shirt and beige shorts. His sleeves bunch up at his elbows when he leans against a red wooden staff.

“We need your help,” Brook says.

Myles nods. “I can do that.”

“The King has sent Guard and Soldiers here,” I say, voice high and thready. The muscles spasm in my neck when I try to move my head, and I grit my teeth, biting my tongue before I can cry.

One glance at Astra tells me she’s beyond her limit. She’s pressed up flat against Brook’s foreleg, cheek buried in Brook’s feathers. The look in her eyes is distant, somewhere far, far away.

Keep it together. We have to keep it together. We have to make it out of here.

I turn my whole body around. The Guard and Soldiers are closer, and the sunlight reflects off the Soldiers’ armor in harsh beams of light. They’re closer than they were before. A small group of people rushes out from the Sea. I look away before I can see what happens, but I can still hear. I pin my ears and squint my eyes against the shouts of those asking what’s happening and why and the slick squelch of bloodied weapons and the thud of bodies collapsing to the ground. I catch my own name, and I stumble.

Please, I beg whoever has fallen and met Lucius just now, I don’t want this. Please, you have to know that.

I flinch when I feel a hand on my shoulder and then cry out as the snake’s snapped-off fangs still lodged in my neck stick and press against my vertebrae.

“Sorry,” Myles says.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I can’t stay with the King but if I di-.”

“Hey,” Myles interrupts. “You can’t do that.”

“I won’t let you,” Ky says.

I close my eyes and take a breath, willing myself to stop trembling and shaking so I can just think for one moment.

“You have friends here who need you, and the King’s gonna make his own choices. You are not responsible for what the King does. The King has had his chance a million times, and he has made his decisions very clear.”

I sit down.

“You… y-you can’t do that,” Astra says, wings low at her sides. The long fur on the back of her neck falls over one shoulder. “You can’t leave.”

“I know, I know,” I reply quickly. I can’t hear how broken her words are again.

I can’t leave her. I won’t. I left once. I can’t again.

When memories of my life as Ice with Bryant before he took to the Amethyst Throne and became King of Ragdon, I try to shove them away. That was so long ago. A lifetime ago. I know all that, and yet… he has sent his Guard and Soldiers.

And for what?

I can’t go back to him. My daughter needs me. I can’t keep giving him bits of myself when he keeps taking and taking and I get nothing in return. He chained me to the Amethyst Throne. Surely the King knows all that.

Does he want me to finally break?

The sad thing is that the King might be right. I’ve survived for decades and saw how my best friend became someone I don’t know and felt as my body turned against me and kept going when I lost my daughter and then my lover. If the King is trying to break me, he’s slowly succeeding.

How much more can I really take? What will be the last straw? How many more straws do I have left?

“This isn’t your fault, Jabez.”

I hum in response to Brook. I know she’s telling the truth, but a part of me cannot fully hear and listen.

Astra bunts her head against my shoulder, rubbing her cheek over my fur. I feel her sniff the bandage wrapped around my throat.

“It’ll be ok,” she says.

“I know,” I whisper, hoping that she’s right and that my agreement won’t turn out to be a lie.

“We need to get out of here,” Ky says. “The Guard and Soldiers are in the Sea. Phoenix will take out as many as he can. Grey and Alex will do what they will. I’m sure others will join in. But we need to leave.”

“Where is safe?”

“Not many go out to the Wailing Marshes. I’ve got a little place out there. It’ll be safer than here.”

Ky tilts his head. “Phoenix and I have been out there. We’ve never seen a house there.”

Myles shrugs. “It’s not that old and I tried to hide it. I only build it for one person, but it’s far enough away from the Sea that I don’t think the Guard and Soldiers will find us, if we can reach it. The Siren’s there, too, in the ocean below.”

Almost everyone has heard of the Siren —an aquatic serpentine creature with enough power that it could pose a threat to the Amethyst Throne— and knows how dangerous it can be. The catch is that it has to be summoned and until then will lurk somewhere beneath the waves at the cliffs of the Siren’s Lookout. Its power lies in its song, and some say its voice can be heard in the breezes that rustle the tall grasses of the marshes around the Siren’s Lookout.

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xxxx

We don’t make it far.

Myles leads the way, using his wooden red staff as a walking stick. I force myself with limited success to stay in the present and not drift away into the churning seas of my mind

But soon a dark shadow passes by overhead, blocking out the sun for a few moments. I try to look up and see what it is, but I can’t move my neck enough. Except that then I see what it is.

The Dragon soars over the Sea, purple wings spread wide. Light glints off its amethyst scales as it soars through the air, scanning.

“Fuck,” I breathe, watching as the Dragon crosses the Sea.

It somehow seems even bigger than it did curled up around the Amethyst Throne. People scream and I see a few horses in the King’s army rear and spook. Smoke drifts from the Dragon’s nose and mouth. Its snakehead tail twists and hisses, fangs glinting in the sun and looking far too similar to the snake that bit me. I blink away the images that arise.

I can tell the exact moment the Dragon finds us: First, its snakehead tail locks onto us, and then the Dragon’s entire body tilts as it turns, angling its wings. It inhales audibly, even from across the Sea. Its throat and chest illuminates beneath its scales, a light violet under purple.

“Oh, no,” Wyatt says.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Ky hisses, teeth chattering.

I step in front of Astra as my ice prickles in my toes.

The Dragon gains more ground, rising higher into the air, then tucks its wings against its sides and dives toward us. The Dragon plummets through the air. Once it’s close enough, it opens its jaws and unleashes a wave of fire that soon becomes all I can see.

Brook squeals, loud and sharp and shrill and filled with fury. Nostrils flared, she pins her ears and arches her neck as her horn glows with bright pink light. She stomps her hooves, and clouds of dust rise. I close my eyes against the blinding flash of light, then blink away the afterimages that float in my vision.

Before the Dragon’s flames can reach us, a ring of pink hovering in midair swallows up the fire. Twinkling sparkles spit and fizzle around Brook’s horn as she snorts and brays, mane and tail flowing with the energy she’s rapidly spending. Her powers take in the Dragon’s fire before the ring closes up and vanishes.

The Dragon unfurls its wings and swoops up, missing us. It circles back around as it flies around the Sea again.

Myles brandishes his staff like a weapon, and Ky flicks his tail back and forth, eyes never leaving the Dragon. Astra presses herself to my side. Brook’s flanks heave as she turns her attention from the Dragon to the forests near the Lava Flats, away from the Sea. Pink dances and flickers around her horn, reflecting on her forehead and in her eyes.

The ring of pink reappears within the forests, big enough that the top is visible above the tops of the trees. Fire explodes from within the ring, and trees turn into matches as they go up in flames.

What did you tell the Dragon to do, King?

I watch Brook’s portal release all the fire it had absorbed. A portion of the forest disappears as it’s seared and turned to ash.

We can be upset about the King later. We have to get out of this first.

The Dragon rises up into the air, but following close behind is Grey in his dove form. Grey slashes at the Dragon’s wing with his talons. For the second time, the Dragon unleashes a stream of fire that blankets part of the Sea in seconds, before anyone can escape. I let myself shut down before I can hear the aftermath, but I can’t block out everything.

“PHOENIX!” Ky screams.

He lunges forward, fur fluffed out. Myles grabs onto his bandana, and Ky freezes, ears pinning. He takes a small step backward to take the tension out of the bandana, then doesn’t move any further.

“Let. Go,” he demands, so still that it’s unsettling.

“Of course,” Myles says, stepping back with his hands up. “The Dragon breathes fire. None of us are fireproof. We have to think things through. We can’t just jump in.”

A growl rumbles in Ky’s chest. “You think I don’t know that I can burn?”

Ky shakes out his pelt, but he’s still trembling, claws sunk so far into the ground that there’s indents.

Myles has a sad look on his face that’s matched within Wyatt’s expression.

“If we do nothing, people will die. Phoenix is the only one who can never burn. He’s strong, but not as strong as the Amethyst Throne.”

“We have to be careful,” Brook says. “We only get one shot.”

With a roar, the Dragon then inhales yet again, throat and chest flaring in a bright violet as it readies itself. I watch, body going numb, as Phoenix clambers up a smoldering pile of splintered wood and smoking bits of burlap. The Dragon releases a stream of fire that explodes on the ground in massive billowing clouds of orange and red tinged with purple. Grey dives and plummets through the air toward where I can only assume is Alex. The flames from the Dragon envelop Phoenix, and Ky screams, dropping to the ground with his pupils blown wide.

Brook curses under her breath, and Astra whimpers.

What happened? How many homes will be destroyed? How many are dead? How many more will die? Should I have just stayed with the King? Maybe then this wouldn’t be my fault.

I know I didn’t tell the Guard and Soldiers to storm the Sea and I know I didn’t tell the Dragon to raze the ground, but maybe I could’ve prevented the King from making the decision in the first place. I tremble, and the twin puncture wounds along my spine burn. The bandage around my neck feels like a choking collar. Once again, I can feel the ghost of the venom spreading through every bit of my body, the weight of the snake’s body and the pinch as its chain links catch on my fur and tug. I can’t see Phoenix, but I know he’s there, somewhere enveloped within the inferno.

My powers itch beneath my skin. I want to send a tidal wave of ice across the Sea to stop the Dragon, to find Phoenix and get him out of the flames. Phoenix cannot burn, but he doesn’t know the Amethyst Throne. He’s not a child, but he’s not much older than Astra. He doesn’t know the extent of what the Amethyst Throne can do. He’s going to get himself killed. The Sea is going to burn, and it will be my fault.

The fire from the Dragon spreads across more of the Sea, consuming every tent one by one, until it stops in its tracks.

I know we need to go, but I can’t move. I’m frozen in place, as if my own powers have acted upon me. Part of me wants to dissociate, to lose myself within the currents of the icy waters in the depths of my mind. I want to feel the cold embrace of the oceans, not the panic and fear the King has brought yet again. I want to drift and only know the waves and try to forget everything that’s happened.

Astra presses further against me.

“Stay with me and Brook,” I say, running my jaw over her neck and shoulders. I feel Astra hum in reply.

The flames from the Dragon shake and vibrate then get thrown back toward the Dragon, that snarls and twists out of the way.

“Fuck right off, cream puff,” Phoenix roars.

When the Dragon falls toward the ground in an attempt to avoid the fire Phoenix keeps sending at it, the black cat sinks his claws into its wing and clambers up onto its back, ripping and tearing at its scales.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of the lower slopes of Ragdon Volcano. The dark stone stretches across the ground with little clumps of grass sprouting here and there.

In an instant, I see myself and Freedom building our home. I called upon water and brought it up from the ground to freeze in cracks and holes, shattering rock that Freedom then moved away. We built our little home, where our daughter, Astra, lived for the first few months of her life.

I stop and stare through the expanse of Ragdon Volcano, seeing the moment the Justice came and grabbed Astra in its stony hands. Its green eyes locked onto us, and they became all I could see as it told us of the King’s claims of abuse. Claims that we abused Astra and she wasn’t safe with us.

My throat closes up as I remember the panic that put me in a chokehold as I realized what was happening and just how little power I had to stop anything.

I wish I could have told my younger self what would happen. That after the trial, we wouldn’t see Astra for ninety years, that the last time we saw Freedom was when she walked away because we couldn’t be together in our grief, that we would lose Freedom too, that the King would curse us and we would take it because breaking our curse meant putting our daughter in danger and we couldn’t do that. We had to take the pain and the suffering because the alternative was letting the King find Astra.

That the pain might never go away because it’s still here, even after we’ve found Astra again.

No, stay in the present, Jabez. Astra needs us.

But I see movement on the side of Ragdon Volcano, and I freeze, as if the ice has taken over my body and maybe it has because I cannot seem to move at all and the thought of disappearing into the churning waves of my mind seems so much more appealing.

A figure makes their way down toward the Sea, big enough to be seen, even from so far away. Colors spread across every part of their body, working toward a bushy red tail that swishes with every step. They’re so far away, but I can almost count the earrings, see the golden rings and the diamond gem.